Fabricated Connections, Deeply Felt

Abstract

Framed by an account of the author’s visit to Guantánamo Bay, the Introduction to Figuring Violence queries the limits of what outsiders know about the six beings around which the book is organized: civilian children, military children, military spouses, veterans with PTSD and TBI, detainees, and military dogs. Reflecting on the common status of these beings as political subjects that are partially or fully unknowable, the Introduction outlines the various affective and imaginative practices that transform them into repositories for sentiment. It also explores the mechanisms and politics of the ‘figuring’ that gives the book its title, namely the abstraction of the actual beings with whom these practices are ostensibly concerned. The Introduction makes the case for the centrality of apprehension, affection, admiration, gratitude, pity, and anger in contemporary American militarism. In addition to providing an overview of the book as a whole, the Introduction also elaborates a methodology for the study of affect as it materializes in practices of representation and through wartime public culture.